Warp Drive? Not So Fast!

{Did you get the pun?}

Quantum mechanics has just thrown a very cold and wet wrench into the dream of having a warp drive. The Physics arXiv blog has a review of a preprint that could send Michael Alcubierre warp drive back into time.

That's the conclusion of a new study into how warp drives would behave when quantum mechanics is taken into account. "Warp drives would become rapidly unstable once superluminal speeds are reached," say Stefano Finazzi at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, and a couple of friends.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0141

We'll have to wait and see if this gets published, and where.

Such fun! Now, back to some real-world physics.....

Zz.